Hear, Hear

Critical Mass speaks to novelist and Time book critic Lev Grossman and what he says in response to one of their questions has such acute relevance to India that one can't help but reproduce it here:

"Q: After a decade or so of covering books, how would like to see book pages change in the coming years?

A: At the risk -- nay, certainty -- of sounding kind of snobbish, I wish book sections in general would leave book-reviewing to the pros. There's a pervasive notion that anybody who can read can write a book review. Not so. Good god, there is nothing so boring, so dank and unappealing on the page, as a bad book review.

And at the risk of sounding reverse-snobbish, I'd like to see more serious review attention go to genre fiction. It is, after all, what most people read. The worst of it is very bad, and the best of it is very very good. Why not help potential book-buyers divide the one from 'tother?"